It’s unusual to see a grown man’s mother rush to her son’s defense on national television when that son has been nominated to serve in a president’s cabinet. It’s also unusual for a mother’s private email to her son to end up, years later, as the centerpiece of a story in the New York Times—a story meant to assassinate the character of that same nominee. But these are unusual times.

Or rather, these are the policies of the New York Times when the person is nominated by Donald Trump.

When Trump nominated Pete Hegseth, a veteran, bestselling author, and former Fox News television host, for secretary of defense, political observers on both sides of the aisle predicted a rocky nomination process for the outsider who had vowed repeatedly to pursue radical reforms at the Department of Defense. Some facts about Hegseth’s messy personal life were already public knowledge: his two divorces and at least one extramarital affair, for example.

Yet this was evidently not enough for reporters and editors at the Times. They decided to publish the full contents of a private email written by Hegseth’s mother, Penelope, during a contentious divorce and custody battle with his former wife—an email in which Penelope chastised her son for mistreating his ex.

The Times notes that it “obtained a copy of the email from another person with ties to the Hegseth family,” and, responding to a comment on the piece, the reporter who wrote the story claimed that “no privacy laws were violated” in obtaining the email. That’s squirrelly talk, since the paper unquestionably violated the privacy of the Hegseth family by publishing their private communication without their consent.

When the Times contacted Hegseth’s mother, she said she “had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written” and added the context that she had “fired off the original email ‘in anger, with emotion’ at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce.” Penelope Hegseth told the Times that her son had her full support.

It’s worth noting that the reporter, Sharon LaFraniere, the Times correspondent assigned to the Trump-nominees beat, was also part of the reporting team at the Times that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for their work promoting the Russiagate hoax. They credulously reported on evidence that suggested Donald Trump had stolen the 2016 election with help from Russia—now an undeniable falsehood that the paper has never acknowledged and that both the Mueller investigation and the Durham special counsel report debunked.

LaFraniere makes little effort to hide her dislike of Trump. In response to comments on her article, she repeatedly pushed unsubstantiated claims. When a commenter posted a copy of former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s CV with the remark “This is a normal Secretary of Defense resume,” LaFraniere responded, “Some would [sic] that it is Mr. Hegseth’s lack of this kind of resume that added to his appeal to Mr. Trump because he will lack status and be less likely to challenge him.”

Other outlets have also pursued stories about Hegseth’s behavior, although none has managed to get anyone on the record. NBC News reported that “three current and seven former Fox employees” who refused to be named claimed Hegseth had a drinking problem. Hegseth even got the typical just-up-to-the-point-of-slander Jane Mayer treatment in the New Yorker, in a long article where yet again not a single source would go on the record backing anti-Hegseth claims. Whatever one thinks of Hegseth’s suitability for the position, it’s worth considering what it says about the media that the publication of private family emails and stories based entirely on anonymous sources are now considered the appropriate standard of journalistic ethics in reporting on cabinet nominees.

Of course, this kind of journalism-sponsored character assassination works. Several Republican senators went on the record with reporters, stating new concerns about the nominee if the stories were true. As Senator John Kennedy told ABC News, “I have read all the articles, I have seen all the allegations.” He added, “I want to know if they’re true, and I want to hear his side of the story. And he’s going to have to address them.”

Partisans on both sides are free to praise and criticize a president’s nominees; that’s their job, just as it is the Senate’s job to advise and consent (and in some cases, reject) nominees.

But Democrats know they have a staunch ally among mainstream journalists who clearly see their role not as objective reporters of fact, but as willing accomplices in efforts to derail the nominees of presidents whom they don’t support. Character assassination works because there are no repercussions for the abandonment of journalistic standards in the mainstream media. Indeed, as LaFraniere’s career demonstrates, Pulitzer Prizes are often doled out to those who discard such standards.

When a Times reader commented on the questionable ethics of publishing Penelope Hegseth’s private correspondence, LaFraniere was unbothered by having made someone’s mother collateral damage in a war to oust a nominee. “Should it be part of how the Senate looks at him?” she responded. “It’s a legitimate question, and I guess we will see how the senators feel about it.” LaFraniere justified invading the family’s privacy by arguing, “While it was a private email, Mrs. Hegseth put herself in the public eye when she appeared in a campaign video in 2012, talking about her son’s devotion to his family. And on the Fox set in 2019, when she said she was proud of him every day, especially his military service.”

According to this ridiculous standard, by dint of putting her byline on a story, LaFraniere arguably is also choosing to make herself a public figure who weighs in on things in the public eye. Should her private correspondence with her children become fair game in assessing her reliability and integrity as a journalist? Is this, too, a legitimate question?

Of course, LaFraniere need not worry. In prestige-media circles, this form of character assassination of public figures almost always targets Republicans, not Democrats. The Times has yet to locate a reporter to run down the story of how Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff once physically assaulted a woman he was dating. That story wouldn’t have required digging for dirt in private emails; several of the victim’s friends corroborated her account and spoke to reporters at other outlets. Even if one thinks political spouses are not fair game (while mothers are), at the very least it speaks to Kamala Harris’s judgment that she chose someone like Doug for her husband. Mainstream media ignored the story, while also barely mentioning the fact that Emhoff also cheated on his first wife and impregnated his children’s nanny.

Or consider how the Times covered President Biden’s cabinet choices when he defeated Trump in the 2020 election. A story in the news section in 2021 began as follows: “Donald J. Trump valued deal makers and personal wealth and demanded loyalty. In doing so, he created a cabinet of mostly wealthy, white men with limited experience in government, mirroring himself.” By contrast, the story goes on, “President Biden has taken a different approach, turning to policymakers with government experience… . The new president has also prioritized diversity in filling out his circle of top advisers…. Mr. Biden has nominated far more women and more nonwhite cabinet members than Mr. Trump.”

It’s clear that had Kamala Harris defeated Trump, the Times and other mainstream media outlets would not be tracking down dirt from the family members of cabinet appointees because they believed it vital for understanding their character. They would instead be praising the diversity and inclusiveness of her nominees and burying anything that might detract from the positive messaging.

This surely brings short-term satisfaction to partisan reporters and editors in newsrooms, but it is actually destroying them. The denizens of institutions that spent years sanctimoniously decrying the erosion of norms under Trump fail to see the role they play in the erosion of standards in their own profession—and the deserved erosion of trust among the public that is the result. And the erosion of subscribers. And advertising dollars. And most of the jobs available to journalists over the next decade. Congratulations.

Photo: AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.

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